First off I apologise for the extreme lateness of these posts. We have been keeping them regularly but it was difficult to post them due to an inability to connect to the wifi at Manons house. But, here they are.

So we’ve been in the Netherlands a little over a week, staying with Manon’s family in Zwijndrecht. They’re incredibly lovely and super hospitable. Manon’s mum, Rosita, cooks fantastic food, and keeps offering us more and more, but will always protest us helping with the dishes. Manon’s dad, Marcel, is very nice, although quiet, and is happy to pick us up from the train station whenever (although we try to catch the bus when we can regardless.) and Manon’s brother Wilco is sweet and very funny, but lives in front of the TV.

We spent the first few days just resting and lazing around. We really didn’t do much at all except watch multiple episodes of the Cleveland show with Dutch subtitles. On Friday afternoon Boyd came and joined us. Boyd is something of a semi-adopted brother, although he lives on his own in Rotterdam, he comes to stay with the Vos’s on the weekends, and is very much at home. He’s very funny, and he and Wilco tell us stories and jokes.

On Sunday, Susan, Manon’s other best friend, came round, and we went to Dordrecht. Because Manon had to work at night, we couldn’t spend all afternoon there, but we climbed the church tower, and got a coffee afterwards. The tower was pretty cool. It’s not quite as high as the Belfry, but it offered an excellent view of Dordrecht and the surrounding towns.

Monday morning we got up early, and, with a small bag packed, drove with Manon to her uni in Nijmegen. The drive wasn’t long, about an hour and a half, and mostly freeway. But Nijmegen itself is lovely. It’s one of the oldest city in Holland, and was once part of the Roman Empire.

  We spent most of the first day wandering around the city. Carnivaal was this week, so the streets were packed with people in weird costumes, stalls, confetti and outdoor pubs. Carnivaal music, which is an awful (yet unnervingly catchy) mix of Oompa Loompa music and techno was pumping out of most pubs. But we managed to find a quiet one and had lunch. During our walk we saw some of the fort towers left over from the Roman times, some gorgeous frozen rivers, and the shop lined cobbled streets. That night we had dinner at Manon’s student flat with Manon’s boyfriend Jens. Jens in like the stereotypical perfect guy. Tall, handsome, studying to be a doctor, very nice, well dressed, on the row team, apparently good at bowling, cooking and irons his own shirts. (There’s gotta be something wrong with him… Maybe he’s got 7 toes or a weird fetish or something…) a delicious pasta, and a bottle of wine later we went to bed, the three of us squeezing into Manon’s small room. (Which is pretty roomy for a student room actually.)

  The next day we woke and got dressed for Carnivaal. Carnivaal is a Dutch holiday that lasts a week or so, leading up to Lent. The basic idea is everyone parties and drinks and has fun before 40 days of Lenten fasting. I don’t know how many people do the fasting bit still, so I have a feeling it’s now just an excuse to put on a weird costume and drink yourself stupid. Because packing a costume in your rucksack is something only Eamon would do, we didn’t have anything to wear, but Manon lent us her and Susan’s Mario and Luigi costumes. Manon went as Alice in Wonderland. The tricky thing was wearing enough to keep you warm under your costume. It was damn cold that day. We met Manon’s friends (Dorothy, a sea captain and 4 nurses) at the train station and crammed on a train with every TV or movie character you could think of, a menagerie of animals, and several delegates from each culture of the world. We did see some excellent costumes though: the Spanish Inquisition, a cone of chips, sex (a foam suit made to look like the guy was lying in bed with a chick on top of him.), Uncle Sam, a Toffee Pear, a pirate being eaten by a shark, Finn, nude suits with could-only-be-compensating-for-something sized fake dicks, and just about any onesie you could think of, which made me desperately wish I had bought the owl onesie I saw in Primark back in London. (So. Damn. Comfy.)

  We spent from 11am til 7pm running around through massive crowds, from pub to pub, buying tiny beers, cheap wine and flugel shots (like vodka red bull in a tiny 30ml bottle), dancing and eating greasy Dutch fried food. It would have been an excellent day if I didn’t have a massive headache for most of it, which was really disappointing. But, we got home at like, 8pm and went straight to bed, so the next morning, we were waking for a hangover that didn’t really come.

On our last day in Nijmegen Alex and I went to see some museums. Manon and her row team were organising this weeks pub for her row club, so she had to run around all day and get bits and pieces ready for that, as well as bake a valentines day cake for Jens (which, from the look of it, may give him diabetes. To quote Sheldon Coopers mum: “he’ll die at 50 but his love will be true.”) Alex and I did a teeny bit of shopping, buying a new pair of jeans from H&M each, before going to the Straffelmorenstoren (I have no idea what that museum was called so don’t quote me on that one.) This museum focused on a fortified tower and tunnels underneath, from medieval times. It was interesting, but small. I think we got through it in about 20 minutes. Also, the museum obviously isn’t the richest, and must have got whatever models they could to demonstrate the use of the canons, as these models looks suspiciously Neanderthal.